Another fun fact: Your internet service provider is in the business of making money. And that means there's a decent chance that there's a cap on how much data you're allowed to use every month — and possible extra charges if and when you go over your set amount.

So, that leads us to the following question: How much data does Netflix use?

Netflix can use a ton of data — but you also have some control over it.

The short answer is "it depends." It depends on the length of the show you're watching, of course. The longer a movie or show is, the more data it'll end up using.

But it also depends on the resolution in which it's being shown.

Think of it like this (which is extremely oversimplified): You have a 1-square-foot box of a single color. That's easy, and won't take up much data. Split that box into four equal pieces, all of different colors, and it'll take more data. Split that again into 16 equal pieces, all with even more colors — that means even more data.

That (again, oversimplified) is what's going on when you're watching video. Something streamed at a standard-definition 480p — that's 480 lines of light on the screen on the short edge — inherently uses less data than something streamed at 720p with, you guessed it, 720 lines of light crammed in there. High-definition video brings in 1920x1080 resolution — or some 2 million individual pixels, and the newer UHD (or 4K) resolution weighs in at 3840x2160 resolution.

More pixels means more data. A lot more data. But it also means a much clearer picture.

So. How much data does Netflix use? Again, it depends. But here's the sort of ballpark we're in, according to Netflix:

On a low-bandwidth setting, Netflix uses around 0.3 gigabytes (or 300 megabytes, more or less) of data per hour.